Day 81 : A late start

9th July 2013
Mile 1018 to mile 1026 : Sonora Pass to nowhere special
Mileage : 8

It is fair to say that hiking got off to a late start today. We had the best of intentions of getting a relatively early start and hitting the road by midday after having done a small resupply. The first part of the plan went fairly well, and by 1 pm we were all good to go, so Pan, HoopDreams, Mr Green, whom we had caught up to the day before, and myself walked back to the main road from the resort to start hitching. It did not go well. We had heard that it is a hard hitch, but had high hopes given how easy our hitch was to get down to Kennedy Meadows in the first place. When we got to the junction, we found 6 other hikers looking for a ride, some had been there a while. There was not a great deal of traffic heading up the hill, most infact turned at the junction to go up the Kennedy Meadows leaving only one or two to zoom past us. After about an hour we decided that a group of 10 was too intimidating for most drivers, and that our best course of action was for most of us to hide out of sight and let the first two try their luck and for them to be replaced when they got a hitch. It was a good idea, but it didn't work. By 4pm we were getting despondent, and i decided to try yogiing a ride. An elderly man called Mike staying at the campsite just next door had come over to chat to us a little while earlier, so I went over to ask for a ride. He said could certainly help us out and wanted to know how many of us wanted to go, to which i replied 'as many will fit in the truck. Fortunately, turned out to be all of us. He had a large pick up truck for towing his camper van around so 10 hikers didnt phase him or his truck in the slightest and before so long we were all back at the top of Sonora Pass looking to make some miles in the late afternoon sun. And so it was that 2.5 hours later we had covered 8 miles, and although way below our initial target, it was good enough for the day so we set up camp, had a fire for once and went to bed determined to make tomorrow a better day.